


Flare

by WishingStar



Series: Flare [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: (just a smidgen but it is referenced), (not literally but effectively), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Sex Pollen, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Sex, yeah fun combo right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4333164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishingStar/pseuds/WishingStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people choose their soulmates, fostering a bond over years of trust and intimacy. Others—well, they flare instead. Flaring betrays a lack of discipline, people say. It's improper, bonding out of wedlock. It's risky, leaving your soulmate up to chance, when a flare won't always distinguish between an appropriate match and a deviant one. And there's something vaguely sordid about bonding through a surge of uncontrollable lust.</p><p>Steve never meant to flare with anyone, least of all with Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flare

**Author's Note:**

> I developed this AU for PWP purposes, but unfortunately failed to take into account how I can't write PWP to save my life. So here, have a slow burn and a generous helping of angst instead. (And if anybody else wants to take a shot at a PWP set in this 'verse, I'd totally read it.)
> 
> Also, sorry about the underage--I'd have preferred to age them up, but it wouldn't have made logical sense within the story.

Liza Donovan is six years older than Steve, and she's the only person Steve knows who bonded spontaneously. Although, Bucky reminds him, that might not be true. Spontaneous bonding isn't talked about, except in the sort of pulp magazines you read in bed with the sheets pulled up to hide what your hand is doing. Or else in morality tales, where a hapless sinner's misbehavior is punished by accidental bonding with someone wholly unsuitable, like—well, Steve never quite understood the fuss over mixing races. But he'd hate to bond with someone he's not allowed to marry, so there's that.

The point being that Steve's parents, or Bucky's or anyone else's, could have spontaneously bonded and lied about it, because it isn't what _nice_ people do. Steve only knows about Liza because he saw it start.

~*~

 _[1930]_  
Old Mrs. Olsen's teenaged grandson came to visit Brooklyn that summer. The grandson, Jack, despite his age affording him a neighborhood rank far exceeding Steve and Bucky's, proved himself an ally on the second day by sitting on the curb to teach them trick shots with marbles. By the end of that week, he'd earned himself an entourage of idolizing younger boys, Steve and Bucky among them. None save Jack were old enough to need gloves, so Jack had removed his and tucked them into his belt. Liza found him bare-handed when she came to call her brother for dinner.

Step one of bonding is recognition. It happens when your eyes first meet. But it's easy to overlook, or to imagine. One of Bucky's uncles thought he'd found his soulmate, once, only to get her gloves off on the wedding night and learn he'd been mistaken, and they'd have to foster the long way. It happens. The opposite happens, too, where you meet the right person but don't know it until later.

Liza knew. Steve, absently counting his marbles, didn't fit the pieces together until afterward, but Liza must've known. She trailed off mid-sentence and stared at Jack. He stared back.

"Hello."

"Oh. Hi." Jack winced and scrambled to his feet, and took her gloved hand in his. "I'm, uh. Nice to meet you. Oh!" He dropped her hand like a hot poker and fumbled for his own gloves. "Sorry, so sorry! Don't know what I'm..." Then he dropped a glove.

Liza laughed and stepped back, giving him space to retrieve it. Her foot landed on a stray marble, and she skidded, and there was a flash of confusion and quick movement as her arms flailed and Jack rushed to steady her. "Whoa, whoa! Are you—"

"I'm fi—"

Then they both froze like statues, looking down. Steve, following their gaze, felt his mouth drop open and his throat constrict—Jack's right hand rested on Liza's naked forearm, in the gap between her glove and where her sleeve had ridden up.

Step two: skin-on-skin contact initiates the bond. The older kids call it 'flaring.' The nuns tell them to watch their language.

Liza wet her lips. Jack moved his hand a little, like he meant to release her, but he changed direction partway through and slid up past her elbow. "I. Um." They were both panting slightly, faces flushed and glistening.

"Uh-huh." Liza lowered her gaze, eyelids fluttering, and suddenly blushed a bright crimson. "There's kids around," she murmured. "You might want to—"

"Ah, shit." Jack dropped his left hand, the one not touching Liza, and flattened it at a right angle to his thigh. Some of the boys tittered. Jack twisted his hips, trying unsuccessfully to hide the bulge in his pants.

Steve glanced at Bucky. Bucky's face had gone completely slack; he wasn't laughing.

"I—didn't mean to," Jack moved his right hand again. This time his fingers caught the edge of Liza's glove. Liza made a faint noise in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut. Slowly, like it took intense concentration, she used her other hand to pick Jack's fingers off her arm. Jack cleared his throat. "I really—I didn't."

"Doesn't matter," Liza said. "But we should—"

"Right. _Oh._ Um, where do you—"

"This way." Liza, still gripping three of Jack's fingers, dragged him several backward steps before turning around and leading the way, at a pace that qualified as walking-not-running but only just.

Step three is sealing the bond. At least, that's what they call it in polite company.

Silence reigned for at least half a minute, before one of the other boys nudged Liza's brother, Michael. "Man, did your sister just flare with Jack Olsen?"

"Yeah." Michael grinned from ear to ear. "It was _great_."

Bucky snorted. Bucky had just turned thirteen, and he thought it made him hot stuff. "You realize what they're doing now, right? Probably right this minute."

Michael didn't skip a beat. "You're just jealous, 'cause I get Jack as a brother-in-law and you don't." His face lit up like a Christmas display. " _And_ I get to tell Ma and Pops. Liza's gonna go off her _trolley._ I gotta go!" He grabbed his bag of marbles, heedlessly spilling a few, and took off running.

By silent consensus, the rest of them started collecting their own marbles and scattering homeward. Bucky ruffled Steve's hair as he passed. "Seeya tomorrow, squirt."

Steve flattened his hair and rubbed away the tingling in his scalp. Watching Jack and Liza had left a funny twist, low in his belly, and even Bucky's familiar touch felt strange.

~*~

The next morning, Bucky held his fingers stiff and awkwardly interlaced. He was wearing thin ivory-colored cotton gloves. Upon seeing Steve's raised eyebrows, he smiled with a hint of sheepishness.

"I told my ma 'bout Liza and Jack. She said I sounded way too interested. Said I was growing up without her noticing." He spread his hands and examined the fabric. "It was interesting, though, wasn't it? I mean, just like that, and your whole life changes. Jack might've had a girl back home for all we know."

"Not anymore, he doesn't," Steve observed.

"That's my point. It's just... whoosh. All your plans. Say, d'you think they could hear each other's thoughts straight off, or not till after they sealed?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "You don't hear your soulmate's thoughts. It doesn't work that way."

"Well, all right, mister my-mother-is-a-nurse-and-answers-every-question-I-can-think-of." Bucky frowned. "Did you tell your mother about last night?"

"No. She worked late, I barely saw her."

Bucky smirked. "Good. Learn from my mistake, pal, and you can escape my fate a little longer."

"Is it that bad?" Steve's voice cracked in surprise. Wearing gloves has always seemed, from his child's perspective, like a badge of honor. A rite of passage. Nothing you tried to _escape_.

"These particular ones are. They're hand-me-downs from my ma's sister, best fit we could find in the house. They're too tight and the grips are awful. And they're hot as blazes."

"And you gotta wear them all the time?" This would open up some new opportunities for teasing, but Steve would hate for Bucky to be perpetually uncomfortable.

"Well, anytime there's girls around. We ain't planning on meeting any girls today, are we?" 

Steve shook his head, grinning in anticipation of Bucky's answering grin.

"Good." Bucky stripped off the gloves with his teeth and immediately put Steve in a headlock. " _Much_ better. All's right with the world again."

"Geddoff," Steve grumbled, flailing halfheartedly. Bucky hadn't exaggerated—his hands were much warmer than usual.

~*~

 _[1932]_  
Steve escaped Bucky's fate, as he put it, for two more years. He might've gone longer, but the boys his age wearing gloves started to outnumbered the boys who didn't, and Steve's mother said there was no harm in playing it safe. More likely, she realized that Steve's bare hands were making him a target for ridicule.

"You a big man now?" Bucky teased, the first time he saw Steve in gloves.

"Shut up." Bucky meant well, but Steve, grappling with the new and unhappy suspicion that he'd never be a 'big' anything, didn't want to hear it.

"Hey, what'd I tell you? These things suck the fun out of life. Give 'em here." Bucky took Steve's hands in his, turning them over to inspect both sides. The gloves were mud-brown ( _you won't keep them clean for five minutes,_ his mother pointed out) but they fit Steve well, with enough grip to hold a pencil steady. He made sure of that.

"Your ma sprang for new ones, huh? They're nice."

"We didn't have any hand-me-downs."

"Aw, hell, you should've asked. We've got enough for a small army. Solid ones, wedding ones..."

"But then I couldn't have gotten new ones."

Bucky tapped his nose in acknowledgment, releasing Steve's hands as he did.

Strange. Steve had no reason to expect that Bucky would strip off both their gloves and touch him skin-on-skin. It wasn't as if Steve's hands had changed, underneath. Not as if Bucky made a habit of baring his own hands, anymore, since he got gloves that fit right. And anyway it wouldn't have meant anything if he did, just that they were two friends familiar enough to bypass common courtesy. No reason for Steve to hold his breath.

He breathed out.

~*~

 _[1933]_  
It's the Fourth of July, the midmorning heat already stifling, and Steve is pinching his nose to stem the bleeding. He's tucked himself into a blind alley, facing the wall under a fire escape. Not hiding, he'll insist if anyone asks; he would prefer to keep his latest humiliation private, that's all. So of course Bucky happens by. Steve knows it's Bucky without looking, because... well, he always knows. Maybe his walk, the weight of his step, or just the way he pauses his stride to identify the back of Steve's head.

"Hey. You okay?"

"I'm fine." He sounds like a radio announcer, his voice is that nasal.

"You don't sound fine." Bucky turns him by the shoulders. "Lemme see."

"It's not bad," Steve protests reflexively. "Guy took a couple of shots and left." Bucky can probably fill in what he hasn't said—that the guy didn't feel obligated to stick around because none of Steve's attempts at retaliation caused him actual pain. Bucky doesn't ask, just removes his gloves to keep them blood-free while he examines Steve's face.

He _tsk_ s. "You know you're supposed to call me in for backup when this kind of thing happens."

"You weren't in earshot." Steve would never dream of shouting for help—that's worse than running—but they play this game, where Bucky pretends he can solve Steve's bully problem and Steve pretends he appreciates the offer.

Bucky licks his thumb and uses it to wipe the blood from under Steve's nose. Steve wouldn't dream of admitting this, either, but it feels nice to be coddled sometimes. Really nice. Especially when Bucky takes his gloves off, like they're kids again, and runs a smooth palm along Steve's cheek. Like he's doing now. Deft fingers smooth a few errant strands of hair and brush the outer fold of Steve's ear, light enough to tickle. Steve jerks his head, but he jerks _toward_ the touch, skittish energy overlaying a deeper urge to yield, to sink into Bucky's ministrations and be taken care of, to melt, to feel those hands everywhere—

Steve freezes, unsure of why he's suddenly clasping Bucky's fingers. Two bare hands and the side of his jaw, skin-on-skin-on-skin. The sticky heat of the New York summer presses impossibly, unbearably close. Every square inch of Steve is about to combust.

Bucky tears away, stumbles back, shakes his head like a wet dog, and shoots Steve a look that might be guilt or terror. "I, uh, I should get home. You should get home. We both should. Stay out of trouble, right?"

"Right," Steve echoes, independent thought momentarily flitting beyond his grasp. Bucky doesn't hear; he's disappeared around the corner.

Steve spends the next five minutes catching his breath. It's not like that. It's not _like_ that. It's the weather and his health and his twisted imagination, nothing else, because it's fading now. It's fading. He'll feel right again in no time. Shouldn't have spooked Bucky like that. Serve him right if Bucky stops cleaning his face after this.

~*~

It's the Fourth of July, around sunset, and the streets are crowded. Steve threads his way among neighbors and strangers and red-white-and-blue streamers, enjoying the celebratory atmosphere and steadfastly not thinking about the right side of his face, which still prickles faintly where Bucky touched it hours ago. He's not thinking about Bucky at all. Contrary to popular belief, Steve has excellent mental discipline. He's just selective about where to apply it.

On the corner, a familiar figure lounges with his back against a lamppost, eating what appears to be a handful of strawberries wrapped in a napkin. Steve navigates the crowd automatically, ignoring the dim mental warning bell that reminds him of the awkward circumstances under which they last parted. Bucky wears light gloves, as is proper, but he's unbuttoned his sleeves to catch what breeze he can. Most people out tonight have done similarly, Steve guesses—it's a typical summer style—but he notices on Bucky, because of the way one hand keeps lifting to his mouth and letting the sleeve flap open. The berries have stained his lips dark.

"Hey, kid. Was starting to think you'd miss your birthday." Bucky offers him a strawberry. Steve eats it stem and all, sweetness compounded by relief. They're acting normal. They _are_ normal. They finish the berries, making small talk with their mouths full. They don't discuss earlier, because nothing of consequence happened earlier. In time, a few distant _pops_ alert them to the start of the fireworks show.

"Wanna find a view?" Bucky asks. He waits for Steve's nod, then pushes off the lamppost and catches himself with a hand flat against Steve's back. Steve stumbles; he'd expected an arm around his shoulder and braced for Bucky's weight from a different angle. Bucky watches him recover with a frown and both hands up, poised to help but not helping.

Bucky's keeping his distance. Trying not to touch skin. Pointless, because if Bucky's worried about _that_ , the only safe response is to avoid each other altogether. And even if Steve lived on the safe side—even if he had a passing acquaintance with the safe side—avoiding Bucky is out of the question. The sooner they put this awkwardness tentativeness behind them, the better. Steve takes Bucky's arm and slings it over his own shoulder.

A wrist inside an open shirt sleeve, a bare cheek; maybe the side of his neck; maybe it starts with both their wrists together—does it matter? Bucky's touch this morning left a localized tingle, like a first-degree burn. His touch this time sears through Steve like an electrical bolt, lighting up every nerve at once— _oh—oh shit, that's why they call it_ —

Steve's never run from a fight in his life, but this isn't a fight. This is a tidal wave, an undertow, a rushing whirlpool dragging him down into—this is survival. He runs. He shoulders through the crowd without apology and keeps running.

~*~

By the time he slows, panting, the noise of the party has faded. Steve rests his forehead against a brick tenement wall and closes his eyes. Rapid, uneven footsteps herald Bucky's arrival behind him. Steve has time to tense before his shoulder catches fire and he gasps, somehow fully expecting to be turned around and slammed against the nearest wall and pinned there. Somehow _wanting_ it.

Bucky swivels him around but doesn't slam or pin. His fingers dig into Steve's shoulder, burning through the fabric of Steve's shirt and then blazing a line down his torso, into his groin.

"You know what's happening," Bucky challenges.

"Don't touch me." Steve recoils with an effort, putting a good three feet between them. God help him, he's _shaking_ , his heart is pounding and his throat's going to close off in a minute, he can feel it. Think about something cold, neutral. Don't think about Bucky's hands, soft under his gloves.

"You do know. Explain. Because I've got a guess but it makes no sense—Steve—" Bucky reaches across the gap. Steve staggers back.

"I said don't _touch_ me!" Don't think about his hands, or his dark lips or how they would taste like strawberries if—

"Tell me why." Bucky's voice quavers. He's shaking too, eyes wide and dark in the twilight. "It's not like we... fostered a bond, or something. That's not possible. You have to... do things we didn't, right?"

Steve shakes his head, not sure he could speak even if he weren't focused desperately on breathing. They haven't said the word yet, not the one that would make it irrevocably real, but Bucky's word— _fostering_ —is close enough that they can't go back.

"Explain it. Please." Bucky has softened his voice. Steve can only imagine how much effort it's costing him. "You're the one who understands these things."

Steve closes his eyes. If anything, that makes it worse—speaking to an unseen audience. He opens them again. A deep furrow creases Bucky's forehead, telegraphing his concern. Steve has always found Bucky's concern galling, if only because the alternative would be 'comforting' and he'll never be ready to admit that. Now it calls to him, that face, begging to be stroked, to have its lines smoothed...

Steve lowers his own hands from where they've crept outward, and twines them behind his back. He _won't_ close the gap between them, intentionally or otherwise. Of course, in this position, he'll be too slow to react if Bucky tries to take the decision out of his hands. He might—

_Don't think!_

"Steve?"

 _Explain._ "You... you have to be old enough. You have to have the right hormones. So there's no—" he can say it, he can... he can't. "There's no first contact, because you've been touching all your lives. But it—it builds. As you get older. Till you're ready." Ready. There's a cosmic joke.

"It builds," Bucky echoes.

"I don't know how bad it gets." Closing his eyes helps this time.

"As bad as anyone else's, wouldn't you think?"

Steve remembers Jack and Liza Olsen, the day they met. How neither of them quite finished a sentence and they got off the street in a hurry. Steve and Bucky aren't there yet—don't think about how the flare funnels inward to a roiling center, don't look _down_ —all right, too late, but don't look at Bucky's—

Steve breaks free of his spiraling thoughts by blurting out, "We have to do something."

Bucky bites his lip. The twilight has washed everything to gray, but Steve pictures the bloodred/bloodless white contrast as clear as daylight. He fixes his eyes on the brick corner of the next building over, several paces behind Bucky.

"Don't have much choice, do we?" Bucky pauses. Waiting for Steve to agree? Not a chance. There's only one course of action obvious enough that Steve could be expected to guess it without prompting, and that is not the course they'll be taking. 

Bucky keeps stock-still as the silence lengthens, then swallows before he speaks. "We seal the bond," he says, quiet but clear.

And it sounds just as ludicrous out loud as it did in Steve's head. "Are you insane? We're not _sealing_ anything."

"You got a better idea?"

Steve can't—he needs time to think. Time and space without Bucky's desperate eyes reeling him in. He can't give up without _trying_.

"Oh, wait," Bucky says, "don't tell me. You want to fight it, that's your brilliant solution. You want to fight _fate_. What are you gonna do, foster and seal with someone else in the next forty days?"

"Buck, you know that forty-days-and-you-die thing is a myth."

"No, I don't! And neither do you! Because I got news for you, pal, this ain't Bible times. Guys like you and me don't get miraculously rewarded for our faithfulness or any such thing. This ain't some kind test you can pass or fail, this is our life. Our _life_ , do you get that?"

"That's why we shouldn't do anything rash!" Steve appreciates the irony of those words out of his mouth, absolutely. But he's only ever wanted to do what's right. This... there's a word for it, and "right" ain't the word.

"It's not fate, Buck."

"You got a very different understanding of soulmate bonds than I do, then. Of course it's fate."

Bucky needs to understand. Steve's battled one illness or another all his life, but he always trusted Bucky not to get dragged down with him. Bucky's the strong one, the one who can shrug off anything and keep swinging, and Steve needs that inspiration now. Needs Bucky back the way he was, not sullied by Steve's... condition. _Do not touch him._

"Normal bonds, maybe. But this... this, Buck? You and me? This _ain't how it's supposed to be._ Something's gone wrong, something's... defective, in our heads. The normal rules don't apply."

"So you think, what? That the flare's a fake, and if you hit back hard enough it'll just—shatter? Disappear like that?" He goes through the motion of snapping, soundless in gloves.

Steve tastes blood and realizes he's bitten through the inside of his cheek, clenching his jaw so hard. He'd been thinking more along the lines of a broken arm—splint it and rest, and it heals itself. But he prefers Bucky's mental image. He's grasping at straws anyway.

"It's worth a try."

Bucky flinches. Steve momentarily hates himself for putting that look on Bucky's face, and again for wanting nothing more than to wipe it away with lips and gentle, naked fingers. He can't. They're almost... well, they're almost past the initial danger. What comes next is going to hurt, in all likelihood, but it'll be less risky. They have to try.

"Go home, Buck. Stop looking at me. Get some sleep. We'll think clearer when we're not together; maybe we can figure out something else."

Bucky closes his eyes and inhales, exhales, rattling like he's the one with asthma. The harsh sound washes over Steve like ocean waves, a sweep of almost-tangible sensation, tugging—he holds his ground.

"Fine," Bucky says. "Fine, I'll—be seeing you."

Steve watches, clutching the bricks behind him, until Bucky's out of sight.

~*~

Another cosmic joke: Steve telling Bucky to _get some sleep,_ like sleeping would be an option. It isn't. At least not for Steve. At least not until some three days later, when sheer exhaustion finally overpowers his discomfort. He wakes after two hours with a wet spot in the sheets and a head full of parts of Bucky he's never seen, but wants to.

Washing sheets and pajamas in the sink before his mother finds them gives him something else to occupy his mind, at least.

His mother notices, of course, how how he's flushed and sweating and can't hold the thread of a conversation, jumps at small noises and can barely eat for how the spoon shakes when he holds it. Luckily she only takes his temperature, tuts over his heart rate, and sends him to bed with admonitions to let her know if he feels any unusual symptoms. Steve's never been so grateful to have symptoms frequent enough to be _usual_.

He reads, if you can call it reading when each page takes a dozen tries to sink in.

It hasn't gotten any worse. But it isn't getting better, either.

And he still has no idea how to stop it.

~*~

"I can't do this, Steve."

Steve, face pressed to the window pane, jumps half a foot; he thought he'd be alone until his mother came home around midnight. He maybe should have moved Bucky's key—the spare key, that is—from its usual hideout. He turns. Bucky stands framed in his bedroom doorway, arms crossed, with a stubbled chin and shadows under his eyes. Steve hasn't seen him in almost two weeks, he realizes, counting. He'd say it feels like longer, but in truth, the days have all blurred together.

"You look like hell," he tells Bucky, seizing the offensive. It's true, objectively. Steve's desire to brush back the damp hair stuck to Bucky's forehead, taste the sweat on his skin and find out how that stubble feels against his cheek has absolutely no basis in how Bucky looks right now. It's decoupled from all reason and good sense. It's a law of nature.

Bucky twists his mouth into a rueful smile. "Likewise. But thanks anyway. It helps with the act. I told my family I was avoiding you because I felt sick and didn't want you to catch it."

 _I never knew you were so considerate,_ Steve would say, if he were in the mood for flippancy. It'd beat the other thought to cross his mind: _A little late for that, don't you think?_

Bucky's face drops into a frown, like a switch was flipped. "You fed your ma the same line, didn't you? Don't lie. She thinks you've come down with something."

Steve pushes his bangs aside with the heel of one hand, remembering his mother's cool, concerned touch. Imagining how it would contrast with Bucky's heat. "She says I'm feverish," he admits.

"Yeah. Well, I wouldn't know." Bucky's gloved fingers curl to a fist in the crook of his elbow.

Steve needs a moment, then, to breathe deeply and ignore the shudder of fresh arousal through his core. Much as he wants to touch Bucky, apparently that fantasy pales in comparison to the subtle admission that Bucky wants to touch _him_.

"Go home," Steve says. "You shouldn't have come."

"I had to see you. Didn't know if you'd be holding up the same as me, or worse. You always get hit worse, with your lungs and all. And I had to ask." He closes his eyes and inhales sharply, not quite a gasp. A spike passes through Steve's abdomen in response, and he digs his fingernails into his palms to counter it. "If you might ever change your mind," Bucky finishes.

"Change my mind," Steve echoes, still processing.

"You know. Seal."

Steve laughs, an ugly sound even to his own ears. "I like my life _outside_ a mental institution, thanks very much."

"Yeah? How's the past two weeks been going for you?"

"I've survived worse."

Bucky nods. The shadow of his chin plays over the contours of his throat, up and down. Steve shifts his focus to the corner of the doorway over Bucky's head, where a thin crack runs to the ceiling.

"And there's nothing," Bucky says, voice husky, "nothing I can say that would convince you?"

It's two cracks, actually, in the wall. Very thin and close together.

"I gotta know, Steve. How important it is for you, to beat this thing. What you're willing to pay for it."

Something in his tone drags Steve's eyes down, seeking his. Steve settles on examining his mussed hair. "You know I don't quit once I start something."

"Yeah." Bucky sighs and squeezes his arms, like he's hugging himself. "Don't I know it. Pulled you out of what you can't finish, often enough."

Somehow _you're the best friend a guy could ask for_ doesn't begin to cover what Steve ought to say in response, so he keeps silent.

Bucky's face, albeit fuzzy in Steve's peripheral vision, seems to relax by degrees. Then his head droops far enough forward that all Steve can see is a tilted forehead and hair, even more mussed in the back than front. Steve hears him breathing in the silence that follows, deep but nearly silent, like he's won back some measure of control. Steve wishes he had half Bucky's composure. Steve wants to kiss Bucky. Not that he ever stopped wanting it; he's just been forcefully reminded of that fact.

"Listen," Bucky murmurs, as if Steve isn't hyper-aware of every word, "I gotta go, and you won't see me after this. Till it's over, right? So just... take care of yourself, okay? Take care. It's gonna be okay."

"That's the spirit." Steve forces a smile, because Bucky deserves one even if he's too busy watching his feet to appreciate it.

"Right. It is. Gonna be fine. So don't—I mean, it's okay. I'm okay with it. S'nobody's fault. So don't, you know. You're—you'll be fine. I better go, just—try to be fine. For me, okay? Just remember that, it's all I'm asking. That you're okay, and—you know. Happy."

"It's not forever," Steve protests, mildly alarmed. _Happy?_ He won't be happy till the flare is behind them, and then he'll knock on Bucky's door first thing. He won't accept any other outcome. But Bucky's talking like—and he got so calm—

_"Stop."_

Bucky jerks to a stop like a string's been pulled. He's only turned halfway around.

"Tell me what you're planning," Steve orders. For the first time in weeks, his heart pounds and his hands shake with something _other_ than flare symptoms. _Tell me I'm wrong._

Bucky's eyes have gone wide, hunted. "M'not planning. Nothing. We don't know how long this is gonna take. I'm being safe is all."

"Don't lie. I can read you better than that."

"I _can't do it_ , Steve!" Bucky snaps, both arms flying out to hit the door frame on either side. The noise makes Steve wince, almost as much as the words. "I can't, I _can't_. I'm not as strong as you, never have been. You're the one with the ideas, and the plans, and the _convictions_ , and I—what if this is something else you can't finish, huh? There's only one way for me to pull you out, and that's end the flare, and I gotta do it while I have the chance. Before something happens. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you. And living with myself right now ain't exactly a peach pie, so there's no—"

"Nothing's going to happen to me. And the second this is over—"

"It will _never be over_ , that's what you refuse to see! We're soulmates. It's not a mistake, it's not a _defect_ , Jesus Christ. It's part of us, and it's gonna keep drawing us together until we either seal the bond or one of us—"

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Steve interrupts, stalling, unable to think. He needs to strike something, lash out, shake sense into Bucky. God, he needs to _touch_ —

"I already told you." The fight drains out of Bucky all at once, and he tips his head against the wall and closes his eyes. "I told you, I'm okay with it. S'not so bad. Everyone does, sooner or later. And we're not bonded yet, you wouldn't—feel anything. 'Cept the flare would end. You could go on and foster—"

"I thought you were stronger than this. But you'd rather give up than go down fighting."

Bucky licks his lips. "Okay, look, I'm not—it's not _giving up_. One of us should walk away from this, and I'm afraid—"

"You're afraid."

"Yes, dammit, Steve, I am!" Bucky swings his arm by the elbow, like he wants to punch the door frame again, but arrests the movement before his fist connects. "Let's be honest, okay, let's quit the righteous warrior act for half a second. People die fighting this. You can call it a myth and maybe it's not forty days, I don't know. Maybe it's less, or more. But the deaths are real. Your ma'll tell you the same. Right now we're both in equal trouble, but if I—"

"You'd go to _Hell_ , Buck!"

"You say that like there's any other place for me."

 _You think I'm any better off?_ Steve almost asks. It would shut Bucky up, but it makes him too uncomfortable not to catch in his throat. Steve isn't half the saint Bucky thinks he is. Steve skipped Confession _and_ Mass on Sunday because he can't imagine voicing the sins that have consumed his life these past two weeks. Thoughts. Dreams. Stopgap measures that feel like the only thing keeping him sane during long hours alone with the flare raging through him. Does God prefer this to the alternative? The God Steve knows was never this cruel.

"Steve. Steve, listen to me, I need you to listen. You could move on. You could foster. Marry a nice girl, have a passel of kids, build a bond the honest way with someone you _choose_. Look me in the eye and tell me that's not what you want."

"That's not—what I want." It should burst out reflexively, vehemently—as if Steve could want anything at such an unthinkable cost, even something he's dreamed about as long as he can remember. Instead it breaks, because as the concept unfurls in his mind—Steve and his hypothetical lady who's hypothetically perfect for him and what does that mean, anyway—the weight of sudden conviction catches him off guard. This might be the truest thing he's ever said.

"I don't want any of it without you."

Bucky gives a shuddering sigh, indicative of at least five emotions Steve can't pick apart. "You can't have it both ways, pal. It's me or the rest of your life."

"Then it's you."

Bucky shakes his head in disbelief. "You say that now, but it's the flare talking."

Wrong. Steve's getting it, finally. Everything he's dreamed and hoped and prayed for, a family and a strong bond and that perfect American life, he's dreamed for _both_ of them. Steve finds a soulmate and Bucky does, too; that's how it goes. And they all settle down and the girls get along and nothing changes between him and Bucky, really, and Steve sees, with the force of an epiphany, how this could never have happened. Wouldn't have been fair or right even if it were possible. You can't put your best friend first and your soulmate second.

Steve and Bucky flared the day they met. It's only taken their bodies ten years to catch up.

Bucky is wringing his hands now, bunching up the fabric of one glove with the other and then switching them. Steve watches, captivated by the compulsive jerkiness to the gesture. Bucky's fraying at the seams, falling apart on account of what Steve's put him through in a misguided bid for righteousness. Righteousness according to whom? What kind of heartless creature puts rules in a book over someone he loves? He loves Bucky. God, he loves Bucky. _So fix it._

He's unaware of crossing the room, but when he catches Bucky's hands in his own, stilling them, fingertips resting on the rolled-up hem a fraction of an inch from Bucky's wrist—that's a calculated move. Bucky lets out an anguished keen and throws his head back, practically convulsing. Steve feels the surge of almost-contact, body heat and Bucky's smell and the way he's bared his throat, and the noise he made—feels it with an intensity that should bring him to his knees, but he bears it, blazing like a torch in a way that's _right_.

_It's gonna be okay._

"Steve, I swear to God," Bucky grates, looking at the ceiling, "if you do this out of some obligation..."

"You want it or not?" A hopeless bluff; short of Bucky flinging him bodily across the room, it's already done. A rushing in Steve's ears is rapidly blotting out coherent thought and nearly sweeps away Bucky's answer, too.

"I want what you want. Want you to—oh _God_ —"

Bucky's hands and face and body burn hotter than a furnace, and kissing him is like a first breath after drowning.

~*~

Steve comes down from a dizzy trance in lazy, comfortable stages. First, a rhythmic rise and fall beneath his chest: Bucky's breathing. Second, a stickiness against his belly, and the lesser cling of damp skin along his chest, arms, cheek and nose. Bucky's shirt is rucked up to his armpits; Steve's is... off somewhere, but he's not about to challenge the bone-deep lassitude that's suffused his body and mind, not for something so inconsequential as an article of clothing. From the hint of a draft, cool but not chilling, he'd put his pants at somewhere around knee-level. Rough carpet beneath one hand; funny, since they must have landed less than two feet from the bed. Steve's face is mashed into the crook of Bucky's neck, and Bucky has one hand on the back of his head and the other splayed across his back. Bucky breathes deep and steady, but too rapidly for sleep. His fingers twitch in Steve's hair. Steve puffs air into the side of his neck in response.

Steve has never appreciated the sweet relief that could derive simply from fitting in his own skin.

Well. Maybe not so simply, he concedes, as he shifts to peel his face off Bucky and promptly gets distracted by plush lips catching, plucking softly at his own, tentative but no less irresistible than they were—five minutes ago? Ten? A lifetime?

"Where'd you learn to kiss?" Bucky slurs once they've parted for air. Steve has to pause and take stock because yes, they've been kissing, not just lips but whole mouths like he's never done before, and he hasn't spared it a thought, just followed Bucky's lead. Done what he wanted.

"I think it's the bond," he says, wondering. "Telling me what you like."

"I thought you couldn't read thoughts through a bond."

"You can't. What number am I thinking of?" Because he knows this for a fact, but it never hurts to double-check—but feels silly, at the same time, checking something he knows—he thinks _potato_ very hard.

"Geez, I have no idea." Bucky huffs and slaps his shoulder playfully. "Unless you're thinking you're hungry. I'm starving. You got sandwich fixings or anything?"

Bucky must notice his smile. Or no, in all likelihood, he notices the smug triumph that inspired it. His eyebrows shoot up comically, reflecting his surprise.

"Not thoughts," Steve clarifies. "They call it resonance. Nobody ever told you?"

"Never sure if it was real or just a figure of speech, you know?" Bucky flattens a hand against Steve's ribcage and slides it upward. Steve keeps motionless, knowing what Bucky's after, trying not to give anything away through body language. He lasts from ribs to left nipple, where Bucky hesitates, concentrating hard. Then he takes a sharp right and digs his fingers into that one spot where Steve's pectoral meets his side, damn him.

"Oh," Bucky murmurs, watching Steve squirm. "Oh, I like this. This is gonna be fun."

"Unh. Just remember, I can find your weaknesses just as easily."

"I'm counting on it."

They lie tangled together a while longer, testing the bond and each others' responses. But Steve's barely eaten in days, and with the flare subsided, one newly-prioritized concern leads to another. Food. Kitchen. Leaving the safety of his bedroom. Facing his mother. The world.

"What is it?" Bucky frames Steve's face in both hands. "S'like you flattened out all of a sudden."

"We can't let anyone find out about this."

Bucky sighs. "Right. We'll have to keep wearing the solid gloves."

"And act like we're hoping to meet the right girls someday."

"Could give that up when we hit forty or so."

"I could, maybe. Your family'll keep after you till the day you die."

Bucky's stomach contracts in a silent laugh. Then he braces himself for—something—and combs through Steve's hair with his fingers. "Hey, Steve?"

"Yeah, Buck."

"You still think we're defective?"

Steve thinks... well, Steve has a lot of thinking to do. So much doesn't make sense anymore. But he thinks a better question, at this juncture, is whether it even matters. Whatever happens, they're in it together now.

"You know what? I feel fine." He lays a kiss on Bucky's forehead, or tries to—the shared warmth blossoming in both their chests makes it difficult to purse his lips, when they'd rather be grinning. "So do you. Healthy as a horse. I could eat one, though. How about those sandwiches?"

**Author's Note:**

> Ask me about my worldbuilding. :-) There's a lot that didn't make it into this fic, and (as you might have noticed) Bucky and Steve have been exposed to some serious misinformation. Kind of like sex ed in the real world.


End file.
